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Are the Olympics A Model for Creating Geniuses?
>> MIKE: Here’s an idea: The olympics are a model for fostering genius. theme Unless you live under a rock, I probably don’t have to describe the olympics to you. And if you do live under a rock... Dude, get back underneath that rock, it is weird and scary out here. Every four years the world’s most accomplished geniuses get together and engage in what amounts to an epic battle over precious metals. Oh, and of course, the pleasure of saying they’re the world’s best female freestyle, whitewater, slougum, javilin toss, shotput...er. Wait, did I hear myself correctly? Let’s go to the replay: The Olympics are a model for fostering genius. Really? Genius? The word genius usually brings to mind particular, statistically improbable, intellectual achievers. People like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Mozart and Simone de Beauvoir. Not people like Michael Phelps, Kerri Strug, Usain Bolt or Missy Franklin. But for both classical geniuses in the sciences, math and the arts and athletic geniuses, not only is their goal the same; pushing the boundary of the field, but their brains tend to exhibit really similar characteristics. A mathematics genius expends very little neural energy on doing simple calculations and an athletics genius very little on doing simple physical tasks. Each seems capable of entering a kind of fugue state. Not like that one that Walter has in Breaking Bad, a good kind. Where a high level of performance is reached with just a minimum of conscious effort. You might know it by its true name: The Zone. Brains of both also respond really similarly to practice, physically strengthening and broadening connections in often used neural regions of The Thinking Place. Frankly all of this sounds pretty different from our commonly held idea of genius, which is a rare, fleeting talent springing up out of nowhere, who against all odds, selflessly contributes to bettering the world. You know, like Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day. He gave an alien spaceship a computer virus. I’m willing to bet that’s difficult to do. Genius can’t be like athletics, developed through training and support, it just doesn’t work that way. Or does it? Turns out it might work that way exactly. Genius tends to cluster in times and places that encourage its development. Duke University Stats professor David Banks points out three periods in three cities that were powerhouses of genius. Fourth century Athens gave us Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoras, fifteenth century Florence gave us the Ninja Turtles, and seventeenth century London gave us Shakespeare, Marlowe and Bacon. Both the empiricist and tasty breakfast meat. If there were a bacon olympics, London would take home the gold. Professor Banks said that these eras have specific characteristics that encouraged the growth of genius. A perfect balance of peaceful boom time, a cultural emphasis on education, like minded cohesive social groups and, most importantly, economic support. And while, right now at least, our economy isn’t funding the arts, philosophy or even the sciences as much as it used to, there is a massive economy supporting sports and the olympics. Earlier this year WIRED columnist and Bob Dylan quote expert Jonah Lehrer pointed out that at the intersection of Professor Banks’s work and the work of Bill James; Bill James being the guy who is most famous for developing Sabermetrics or, you know, Moneyball, is the idea that we, right now, are training a whole mess of athletic geniuses. In his book Solid Fool’s Gold, James says, “Our society is very, very good at developing certain types of skills and certain types of genius. We are fantastically good at identifying and developing athletic skills, better than we are really at almost anything else.” This is the case because we, as a nation of fast food aficionados, oddly enough, love sports. We always want new athletes and new athletic inspiration and we are willing to pay for it. And as a result we have a plethora of genius level athletes. We’re constantly breaking records at the time they were set seemed insane. Like in 1954 Sir Roger Bannister was the first person to complete a sub four minute mile, which is now the standard for male, middle distance runners. The standard. And in gymnastics we went from this... playing to this... electric guitar Imagine if we made these kinds of advancements in science or engineering, in fifty years we could have a colony Mars. Or hoverboards. motion running song (Chariots of Fire theme) Whether we’re talking about the arts, sciences, philosophy, architecture or otherwise, if we want to be encouraging the development of genius, we have plenty to learn from the olympics. What do you guys think? Can a society purposefully create geniuses? Let us know in the comments. Oh. Oh, what’s that in the center ring? There were a lot of feels about dubstep. Let’s see what you guys had to say: Thanks to everyone who left comments related to the dubstep and brostep thing, we made a short video describing the difference, so if you missed it, uh, you can just click right here. ZiqqiPH wonders if it’s possible to like or not like certain kinds of music and not argue about it. We agree, and we, we hope that that is true. OmegaLesPaul points out that dubstep isn’t deserving of a lot of credit because dubstep producers are just recycling sounds. Which might be true, but isn’t that also true of most music? Or at least most rock and roll and electronic music? I mean, John Cage is a clear exception but there aren’t many exceptions. Even Mozart didn’t even really make the sounds that he was composing. matrixjorel makes the point that dubstep might actually be related to a primitivism movement where music is just returning back to its roots as noise that sounds good together. May-yeah, maybe. KevinFroleiksComedy makes mention of Edgard Varese who is a composer that if we had more time we would have pointed out. You should go check him out, uh, specifically “Ionization” is a awesome percussion piece. VLUElectronicMusic argues that dubstep might not actually contain noise because dubstep is built on rhythm making the existence of noise harder or impossible. Which is an interesting timbre vs. rhythm argument. Building on that point, manx748 points out that older avant garde music wasn’t harmony or rhythm, it was about sound movement and texture. And last but not least, punkroctopus with the truth bomb. theme Category:English Category:Complete